Once More With Footnotes

whole wonderful plot happening twenty books down the line (thank goodness for quantum interpretations of time). So muc h has happened — and, with luck, still remains to happen. It's a frightening thought. If I'd known Discworld would be this popular, I'd have written better books ...
     

From 20/20 Magazine, May issue, 1989.
     
    A bit of writing about writing. Careful readers wil l spot that Small Gods had been on my mind at the time.
     
    It's a pretty accurate description of the creative process at work ...
     
     
     
     
     
T hought P rogress
     
                  Get up, have breakfast, switch on word processor, stare at screen. Stare at screen some more.
     
                  Carry on staring at screen, but cock ear for sounds of postman. With any luck it will be large bag of post, leading to a busy morning's work. Last novel just gone off to publisher. Got nothing to do. Huge vacuum in centre of world.
     
                  Post arrives. One letter on Holly Hobby notepaper, asking for a signed photograph.
     
                  All right, all right, let's do some research. What we need to know for the purposes of the next Discworld plot is something about tortoises. Got vague idea that a talking tortoise is essential part of the action. Don't know why; tortoises just surfaced from racial unconsciousness. Possibly prompted by own tortoises surfacing from hibernation and currently doing Bertrand Russell impersonations in the greenhouse.
     
                  F ind book on tortoises in box in spar e room.
     
                  Will definitely get bookcases rebuilt any day now (clever idea was to prefabricate bookcase in garage, everything neatly cut, used setsquares and everything, two coats varnish, then all bits brought inside, assembled with proper dowels and glue, hundreds of books in neat array. Interesting science experiment: what happens to wood that has spent weeks in cold damp garage when suddenly brought into warm dry room? At 3am, learned that every bit suddenly shrinks by one eighth of an inch).
     
                  Interestin g footnote in tortoise book reminds us that most famous tortoise in history must be the one that got dropped on the head of famous Greek philosopher ... what's the bugger's name? Very famous man, wherever the tortoise-dropping set get together. Sudden pre s sing desire to explore this whole issue, including what the tortoise thought about it all. Keep thinking it was Zeno, but am sure it wasn't.
     
                  Finding out that it was Aeschylus occupies 20 minutes. Not philosopher, but playwright. In his hands, early drama took on a high-religious purpose, serving as a forum for resolving profound moral conflicts and expressing a grandeur of thought and language. And then a high-pitched whistling noise and goodnight. Look up Zeno out of interest. Ah, he was the one who said that, logically, you couldn't catch a tortoise.
     
                  Should have told Aeschylus.
     
                  Also read up on prayer wheels and, for no obvious reason, William Blake. While so doing, lady phones up to ask if we're the dentist's.
     
                  Definitely getting some work done now. The creative mainspring is definitely winding up.
     
                  Bound into action and press on with some serious disc backing-up. That's the beautiful thing about wordprocessors. In the bad old typewriter days all you had to occupy yourself with when creativity flagg ed was sharpening the pencils and cleaning out the e with a pin. But with the wordprocessor there're endless opportunities for fiddling, creative writing of macros, meticulous resetting of the real-time clock, and so forth: all good honest work.
     
                  Sitting in front of a keyboard and a screen is work. Thousands of offices operate on this very principle.
     
                  Stare at screen.
     
                  Wonder why the eagle dropped the bloody thing on the playwright. It couldn't have been to smash it open, like the book says. Eagles not d aft. Greece is all rock, how come eagle with all Greece to chose from manages pinpoint precision on bald head of Aeschylus? How do you pronounce Aeschylus, anyway?
     
                  Pronunciation dictionary in box in loft.
     
                  Stepladder in